Despite Merkel, Germany has gender issues
Female leader is role model, but remains an anomaly in male-dominated country
OSNABRÜCK, GERMANY— Just 9 years old when Chancellor Angela Merkel was first elected in 2005, Kristin Auf der Masch cannot really remember a time when Germany was led by a man.
But if Auf der Masch, now 21and an apprentice at a wind energy company in this northwestern city, finds it hard to imagine a male chancellor, she also finds it impossible to imagine a female boss.
“There are lots of women at my level, and then there is Angela Merkel,” she said during a recent classroom debate about the election Sept. 24, when Merkel is expected to win a fourth term. “There aren’t many women in between.”
Germany, which has been led by the most powerful woman in the world for 12 years, has a woman problem.
During the election campaign — and in earlier ones — Merkel shunned the word “feminist.” She has rarely if ever publicly promoted the issue of advancement for women — and women in Germany have not advanced much.
Even in politics, where the chancellor has proved a role model for many and has vowed to appoint a genderbalanced Cabinet if re-elected, the number of women in Parliament is certain to drop, whatever the outcome of the vote.
Alice Schwarzer, the country’s bestknown feminist, put it this way: “Since 2005, little girls can decide: Do I become a hairdresser — or chancellor?”
Ask Auf der Masch and the 14 other apprentices in her class how many of the local companies that train them — mid-size businesses that make everything from margarine to mobility scooters — are run by women. Not a single hand goes up.
There are a few female department heads, most of them childless. But collectively the apprentices can think of more managers called “Thomas” than managers who are women.
There are, in fact, more CEOs named “Thomas” (seven) than CEOs who are women (three) in Germany’s 160 publicly traded companies, notes the All-Bright foundation, which tracks women in corporate leadership. Ninety-three per cent of all executive board members in these companies are men. Nearly three out of four of the corporations have no women on their executive teams.
Obliged by law to publish a target for hiring women at the executive level, most happily wrote down “0 per cent.”
“Because of Merkel, the image of Germany abroad is more progressive than it really is,” said Anne Wizorek, a feminist writer who rose to prominence in 2013 when she led a highly visible hashtag campaign against casual sexism.
Some things, from child care to corporate governance, have, in fact, changed for women under Merkel’s watch.
But so deep remains the cultural bias against working women, and especially working mothers, that some young commentators now mention Germany’s “gender issue” in the same breath as America’s “race issue” — a piece of historic baggage that has never been fully addressed, elusive and omnipresent at the same time, a sort of national elephant in the room.
“Just as Obama did not end structural racism in America, Merkel has not ended structural sexism in Germany,” Wizorek said.
In some ways, Merkel’s long tenure has actually made things more complicated, she said.
“We are told: ‘You can become chancellor — what more do you want?’ ” Wizorek said. “I hear that all the time.” The few women who do make it to the top, or close to it, speak of the constant torment of being judged.
“We get no respect from society as working women,” said Angelika Huber-Strasser, a managing partner for KPMG Germany and a mother of three. “They call us raven mothers,” after the black bird (also unfairly) accused of pushing its young out of the nest.
Anka Wittenberg, chief diversity and inclusion officer at SAP, a German software company, already had her three children when she finished a master’s degree in economics and sent out job applications. No German company invited her for an interview.
She made her career in U.S. companies instead, rising through the ranks of General Electric’s German operation before being hired by SAP, a company that is considered unusually progressive for having two women among its eight executive board members (although neither of them is German).
“We have hardly any female role models that show young women that it is possible to have both: a family and a career,” Wittenberg said. “Germany is still very much behind.”